North Korea threatens 'special actions' to take out South Korean government

By Jethro Mullen, CNN

Updated 1322 GMT (2022 HKT) April 23, 2012

North Korean soldiers look at South Korea across the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), on December 22, 2011.

Story highlights

South Korea announced a new missile that could strike the North

Pyongyang threatens 'special actions' against the South's government

State TV shows people throwing rocks at an image of the South Korean president

North Korea said Monday that it would soon initiate "special actions" aimed at destroying the South Korean president and his government.

North Korean armed forces will use "unprecedented peculiar means and methods of our own style" to carry out the actions, the official Korean Central News Agency said in a report, adding that the operation would take 3 or 4 minutes.

It did not specify what those actions would involve.

An unusual broadcast on North Korean state television also announced the planned measures and showed images of people throwing rocks at a caricature of Lee Myung-bak, the South Korean president.

North Korean state media have consistently lambasted the conservative Lee and his administration. Recent reports have described them as "rats."

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One of the main motivations for the threats Monday appears to have been the announcement last week by the South Korean military that it had deployed a cruise missile capable of striking any site in North Korean territory.

That move showed that Lee's government "has long lost its reasoning power," the KCNA report said Monday, citing the Supreme Command of the Korean People's Army.

The South Korean Unification Ministry did not have an immediate comment on the statements from Pyongyang.

The menacing comments from the North follow its failed launch of a long-range rocket earlier this month, which exacerbated tensions in the region.

South Korea and the United States described the rocket launch, which Pyongyang said was to put an "earth observation satellite" in orbit, as a long-range missile test in disguise.